The 9/11 survivor no one can remember

· Tale of flight from burning tower does not add up
· Woman goes to ground after story is questioned

Taken from the Guardian, UK, Friday September 28, 2007
David Dunlap and Serge Kovaleski

Tania Head's story, as shared over the years with reporters, students, friends and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, was a remarkable account of both life and death.

She had, she said, survived the terror attack on the World Trade Centre despite having been badly burned when the plane crashed into the upper floors of the south tower.

Crawling through the chaos and carnage on the 78th floor that morning, she said, she encountered a dying man who handed her his inscribed wedding ring, which she later returned to his widow.

Her own life was saved, she said, by a selfless volunteer who extinguished the flames on her burning clothes before she was helped down the stairs. It was a journey she said she had the strength to make because she kept thinking of a beautiful white dress she was to wear at her coming wedding to a man named Dave.

But later she would discover, she said, that Dave, her fiance, and in some versions her husband, had perished in the north tower.

Ms Head's account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who did die in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

"She never shared those details, and it was nothing we wanted to probe," said Alison Crowther, the mother of Welles Remy Crowther, a man who died on 9/11 and who is credited with rescuing a number of people from the south tower, including Ms Head by her own account.

In recent weeks the New York Times sought to interview Ms Head about her experiences on 9/11 but she cancelled three scheduled interviews, citing her privacy and emotional turmoil, and declined to provide details to corroborate her story. "I have done nothing illegal," she said.

She has retained a lawyer, Stephanie Furgang Adwar, to represent her.

No one has suggested that Ms Head did anything to profit financially from her position as an officer with the Survivors' Network, the non-profit group for which she helped to raise money.

But the organisations to which she has been affiliated have also questioned her account.

For several weeks colleagues who said they respected the good work she had done among survivors have pressed her to come forward and clarify details. But they said they had been unable to persuade her or, in other cases, that she contradicted previous versions she had given.
The board of the Survivors' Network voted this week to remove her as president and as a director of the group, which supports those who escaped the terror that day.

Jefferson Crowther, Welles Crowther's father, said in an interview that he and his wife met Ms Head early last year.

"She explained that her clothes were on fire and that our son took a jacket and put out the flames.

"She told us that she said, 'Don't leave me,' and he replied, 'I won't. Don't worry. I'll get you down.'

"She seemed so heartfelt and genuine about what she said to us."

Explosion Tears Through New York In Replay Of September 11 Panic

Taken from The Mail, UK, 20th July 2007

In a city scarred for ever by terror, they could have been forgiven for fearing the worst.

With visions of 9/11 flashing through their minds, hundreds of workers poured out of skyscrapers when a blast ripped through central Manhattan.

Shoppers ran for cover, dodging flying rubble, and a truck was swallowed when the tarmac opened up into a giant crater.


A man guides a woman covered in mud and blood through the streets after the explosion. One person died of an apparent heart attack


In their terror, people ran so fast from the blast that they left their shoes behind on the pavement

As the dust settled, a 120ft-high geyser of boiling, brown-coloured water was left shooting into the air, its steam shrouding landmarks including the Chrysler Building.

A woman died of a heart attack and at least 30 were injured, some seriously.

When it became known that this was not a terror attack, but an explosion in an underground steam pipe, the relief was tangible.


A firefighter and a man watch the steam billow near the Chrysler building (right). The explosion tore through New York just before 6pm last night. The initial burst of steam went higher than the Chrysler building


Many immediately thought of 9/11 as panic ensued in the rubble-covered New York streets

"We ran down 43 floors thinking we were going to die,' said Megan Fletcher, 35, who works for an Australian company in the Chrysler Building.

"It looked like when the buildings collapsed on 9/11."

Karyn Easton, a customer at a salon a few blocks from the blast, said: "We were scared to death. It sounded like a bomb went off, just like 9/11. People were hysterical, crying, running down the street."


A tow truck was sucked into the road by the blast

The explosion happened near East 41st Street and Lexington Avenue on Wednesday.

Yesterday, with around 20 blocks around the area still closed to traffic, the fear was that dust from the asbestos which insulates some of the underground piping network may have been released into the atmosphere.

Air samples tested negative, but some samples from debris and dust were positive, emergency officials said.

Residents were warned to keep their windows closed and air conditioners set to recirculate internally. Those exposed to debris and dust were instructed to wash thoroughly and discard soiled clothing.


Workers protected against asbestos examine the crater caused by the explosion

Engineers warned that an area up to 6ft around the crater might be in danger of collapse.

Many of the injured were struck by falling chunks of asphalt or rock that had been blasted out of the ground.

Casualties included several firemen and policeman Robert Mirfield, who helped evacuate 75 people trapped in an office building by cutting open a gate.

The cause of the rupture was under investigation. Officials said the pipe, installed in 1924, might have exploded under extreme pressure caused by an infiltration of cold rainwater, or might have been damaged by a water main break.

The site of the explosion had been inspected hours before the blast as part of a routine response to heavy rains that flooded parts of the city.

Millions of pounds of steam are pumped beneath the streets of Manhattan every hour, heating and cooling thousands of buildings, including the Empire State Building.

The systems are normally inspected every six weeks.

Senators Want CIA To Release 9/11 Report

Taken from Yahoo News, May 17 2007
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press

A bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation that would force the CIA to release an inspector general's report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA has spent more than 20 months weighing requests under the Freedom of Information Act for its internal investigation of the attacks but has yet to release any portion of it.

The agency is the only federal office involved in counterterrorism operations that has not made at least a version of its internal 9/11 investigation public.

Sen. Ron Wyden (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., and two other intelligence committee leaders — chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and senior Republican Kit Bond of Missouri — are pushing legislation that would require the agency to declassify the executive summary of the review within one month and submit a report to Congress explaining why any material was withheld.

The provision has been approved by the Senate twice, but never made into law.

In an interview, Wyden said he is also considering whether to link the report's release to his acceptance of President Bush's nominations for national security positions.

"It's amazing the efforts the administration is going to stonewall this," Wyden said. "The American people have a right to know what the Central Intelligence Agency was doing in those critical months before 9/11.... I am going to bulldog this until the public gets it."

Completed in June 2005, the inspector general's report examined the personal responsibility of individuals at the CIA before and after the attacks. Other agencies' reviews examined structural problems within their organizations.

Wyden, who has read the classified report several times, wouldn't offer any details on its findings or the conversations he has had with CIA Director Michael Hayden, former CIA Director Porter Goss and former National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

But he did say that protecting individuals from embarrassment is not a legitimate reason for protecting the report's contents from public review. He also said the decision to classify the report has nothing to do with national security, but rather political security.

Hayden declined to be interviewed about the report. In a statement Thursday, his spokesman Mark Mansfield said the CIA director wants the agency to learn from any past mistakes, but doesn't want to dwell on them.

"Given the formidable national security challenges our nation faces, now and down the road, General Hayden believes it is essential for the Agency to move forward," Mansfield said. "That's where our emphasis needs to be."

The agency's actions prior to Sept. 11 have gotten renewed attention with the release of a memoir by former CIA director George Tenet. He has been criticized for not doing more to warn Bush about the al-Qaida threat.

In interviews about his memoir, he has said instead he worked the bureaucracy beneath the president by asking then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others for action.

Bond said some intelligence officials have dismissed the inspector general's report as "ancient history," which he doesn't accept. He said the report has additional information which would be useful to the public.

"We have no desire to embarrass or throw cold water on the enthusiasm of the great men and women of the CIA, but let's just take a clear and open look at what the IG found and see if we have all of those problems corrected," Bond said.

In an October 2005 statement Goss said the officers involved in counterterrorism were "stars who had excelled in their areas" singled out by the CIA to take on difficult assignments.

"Unfortunately, time and resources were not on their side, despite their best efforts to meet unprecedented challenges," he said.

Goss rejected a recommendation from CIA Inspector General John Helgerson that the agency form accountability review boards to examine any personal culpability. Bond said that move was regrettable.

In his statement, Goss also noted that the agency had received a Freedom of Information Act request for the report, and that a review process was ongoing. But the CIA has not released any documents to The Associated Press or other organizations that began requesting the information at least 20 months ago.

The law requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 days, but officials rarely meet those deadlines and often blame lengthy backlogs.

Groups including the National Security Archive have clashed with the agency over its FOIA policies. Last year, the archive gave the CIA its prize for the agency with the worst FOIA record. Called the "Rosemary Award," it's named after President Nixon's secretary, Rosemary Woods, who erased 18 minutes of a key Watergate conversation on the White House tapes.

The citation noted that CIA's oldest FOIA requests could apply for drivers' licenses in most states. "CIA has for three decades been one of the worst FOIA agencies," archive Director Thomas Blanton said this week.

Many of the individuals highlighted in the inspector general's report are likely to have retired.

But some are believed still to be in senior government positions, making the report's findings even more sensitive at the CIA and perhaps elsewhere within the intelligence community.

The AP has reported that the two-year review of what went wrong before the suicide hijackings harshly criticized a number of the agency's most senior officials.

That includes Tenet, former clandestine service chief Jim Pavitt and former counterterrorism center head Cofer Black, according to individuals familiar with the report, who spoke in 2005 on condition they not be identified.

Yet the report also offered some praise for actions of Tenet and others.

Pavitt is now a principal with The Scowcroft Group, an international business advisory firm, and Black is vice chairman of Blackwater USA, an international security firm whose clients include the CIA and other U.S. agencies.
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Lets hope we get access to this report so that we can truly see what the CIA was doing at around 9-11 and why the agency failed to gather intelligence to stop it from happening. In an article written in Haaretz newspaper - "Greaseball" is an American expression that is used, among other things to describe a member of the Mafia or any other slippery or sleazy type. This was the term used at Mossad headquarters in Glilot to describe CIA director George Tenet. The nickname was used by members of the Cosmos unit of the Mossad's North American desk (which is responsible, among other things, for contacts with foreign intelligence services), because of his body language and his manner of speech. He does seem a shady character, but do most of the Bush Administration, past and present.

7/7 ‘Mastermind’ Is Seized In Iraq

Taken from The Times, UK, April 28, 2007
By Sean O’Neill, Tim Reid and Michael Evans

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.

Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.

Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.

Abd al-Hadi recognised the potential for turning young Muslim radicals from Britain who wanted to become mujahidin in Afghanistan or Iraq into terrorists who could carry out attacks in their home country. He realised that their knowledge of Britain, possession of British passports and natural command of English made them ideal recruits. After al-Qaeda restructured its operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas he sought out young Britons for instruction at training camps. In late 2004 Abd al-Hadi met Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds, at a militant camp in Pakistan and, in the words of a senior investigator, “retasked them” to become suicide bombers.

They were sent back to Britain where they led the terrorist cell that carried out the 7/7 bombings, killing 52 Tube and bus passengers.

Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Hadi was also in contact with Rachid Rauf, a Birmingham man now in prison in Pakistan and alleged to be a key figure in last summer’s alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight.

Abd al-Hadi has also been linked to a number of other foiled al-Qaeda plots to carry out attacks in Britain. But the Security Service, which has previously sent officials to question detainees at Guantanamo Bay, may not have the opportunity to question him directly.

The Government’s recently adopted position in favour of closing Guantanamo Bay is likely to act as a bar on agents travelling there. British Intelligence would have to rely on relaying questions it would like asked by American interrogators.

Security sources said they assessed Abd al-Hadi as a key operational commander, high up the chain in the al-Qaeda structure who was behind many key plots in the UK.

He had a close link with another arrested al-Qaeda figure and, the sources said, would have “a wealth of information”. He is thought to have been in contact with Osama bin Laden before his capture and might be able to provide information about his leader’s whereabouts.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Abd al-Hadi had been classified as a “high-value detainee” at Guantanamo, and joined 14 others, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, as the most senior terror suspects at the Cuba prison.

Mr Whitman refused to say when or where he was captured, or by whom. “Abd al-Hadi was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage al-Qaeda's affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets,” Mr Whitman said.

He added that he was a key al-Qaeda paramilitary leader in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, and between 2002 and 2004 led efforts to attack US forces in Afghanistan with terrorist units based in Pakistan.

In a lecture this week Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, commander of Sctoland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, said that the central al-Qaeda leadership was behind a spate of terror plots against Britain.

He said: “We have seen how al-Qaeda has been able to survive a prolonged multinational assault on its structures, personnel and logistics. It has certainly retained its ability to deliver centrally directed attacks here in the UK. In case after case, the hand of core al-Qaeda can be clearly seen.”

Sources said last night that few figures had been more important at the centre of the revived al-Qaeda. Abd al-Hadi is credited with forming its alliance with the insurgency in Iraq.

US officials said he was associated with leaders of other extremist groups allied with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Taleban.

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, told The Times that catching Abd al-Hadi was important but that it did not spell the end of al-Qaeda.

He said Abd al-Hadi had been an important figure in developing al-Qaeda’s strategy in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and also helped to redirect its terrorist strategy in Europe.

Mr Scheuer, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, said: “It is a blow for al-Qaeda, especially in Iraq, where it will have consequences.

“But al-Qaeda always plans for succession, and there will have been someone lined up to take his place. It is nonsense to think that al-Qaeda is dead.”

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How strange that in the same week George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, lashes out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in is new book, and Saudi Arabia captures 172 suspected terrorists linked to al-Qaida, we have this story were trying to link Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda and Iraq. A senate panel in September 2006 clearly stated that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime." It quotes an FBI report from June 2004 in which former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in an interview that "Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden." The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence community report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents. So is this a made up story or was Dick Cheney right?

Report: France Told CIA About Plans To Hijack Planes Prior To 9/11

The fisaco in the States sorrounding the killings in Virginia have overshadowed this newspiece, it was very difficult to find this news in any US media...

Taken from Haartz, Israel, 16.04.07
By Reuters

French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the Al-Qaida threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, the French daily Le Monde said on Monday.

The newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents that showed foreign agents had infiltrated Osama bin Laden's network and were carefully tracking its moves. One document prepared in January 2001 was entitled "Plan to hijack an aircraft by Islamic radicals", and said the operation had been discussed in Kabul at the start of 2000 by Al-Qaida, Taliban and Chechen militants. The hijack was meant to happen between March and September 2000 but the planners put it back "because of differences of opinion, particularly over the date, objective and participants," Le Monde said, citing the report.

The attacks on U.S. cities that eventually took place on Sept. 11, 2001 killed almost 3,000 people.

Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it had ever been made in the official U.S. Sept. 11 Commission, which produced its findings in July 2004.

The newspaper quoted a former senior official at France's DGSE secret service agency as saying that, although France thought a hijack was being planned, the DGSE did not know that the plot involved flying aircraft into buildings. "You have to remember that a plane hijack (in January 2001) did not have the same significance as it did after Sept. 11. At the time, it implied forcing a plane to land at an airport and undertaking negotiations," said Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi.

Le Monde said the documents showed the French believed bin Laden was still receiving help from family members and senior officials in Saudi Arabia ahead of Sept. 11, 2001, despite attempts to clamp down on the network after Al Qaida's attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.

Briton 'Could Stage Another September 11'

Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 05/04/2007
By Toby Harnden

Interview: America's new homeland security chief tells Toby Harnden of his fears of 'clean skin' terrorists

The United States fears that the next September 11-style attack on America could be launched by Muslims from Britain or Europe who feel "second-class citizens" and alienated by a "colonial legacy", according to the US Homeland Security chief.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Michael Chertoff, who arrives in Britain tomorrow for talks with John Reid, the Home Secretary, said the US was determined to build extra defences against so-called "clean skin" terrorists from Europe.



"We need to build layers of protection, and I don't think we totally want to rely upon the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here," he said.

Mr Chertoff insisted that the US required additional information, including email addresses and credit card details, to vet European passengers and rejected "the idea that we're going to bargain with the European Union over who's going to come into the United States" under the visa waiver scheme.

"We have an absolute right to get this, in the same way that if someone wants to be a guest in my house I have a right to ask them who they are and get identification."

The July 7 tube and bus bombs nearly two years ago had shown that Britain had a problem with its Muslim immigrant population that America did not share, he argued.

"Our Muslim population is better educated and economically better off than the average American. So, from a standpoint of mobility in society, it's a successful immigrant population. To some degree, the whole country is a country of immigrants, and therefore there's no sense that we have insiders or outsiders. In some countries [in Europe], you had an influx of people that came in as a colonial legacy and may have always have felt, to some extent, that they were viewed as second-class citizens, and they've tended to impact and be kind of clustered in some areas."

Mr Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor, said that one of his biggest worries was that "unknown terrorists" - such as most of the 7/7 bombers, who were British citizens with no criminal record or intelligence traces - could use the visa waiver scheme to enter and attack America.

Britain is among 27 countries that participate in the scheme, which allows visitors to enter the US without a visa for up to 90 days. About 18 million people visit America every year under this programme.

Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" who attempted to blow up a transatlantic flight in 2001, was a British citizen travelling under the visa waiver scheme.

Zacharias Moussaoui, one of the September 11 plotters, was a French citizen who entered America without a visa. Mr Chertoff said that "we can do a good job with the known terrorists, if we have their name, or if we've previously arrested them and have their fingerprint on file" but a more potent threat was the terrorist with no known form.

"The fear has always been the so-called 'clean skin' - that's a person whose documents are completely legitimate, are not forged."

This had led the US to require a significant tightening of the rules for passengers travelling under a visa waiver. Among the new requirements are that all passenger information be transmitted to the US before a plane takes off. Soon, passengers will have to give all 10 fingerprints, rather than just two.

"If someone's a terrorist, and they've left their fingerprints at a training camp, or in a safe house where a bomb was built, and those latent fingerprints are collected, we can then, when someone crosses a border, match their real prints against those latent prints even if we don't know their name," he said.

Mr Chertoff rejected the idea that the Iraq war had made the world more dangerous.

"Those that are inclined to be radicalised will find a reason to be radicalised no matter what's going on in the world."

America was "unquestionably safer and more secure" than it was on September 11 2001 but there was a danger of complacency because it had not been attacked for more than five years.

"Where you find some softness is in some elements of the media or in some elements of the intellectual class who convince themselves that this is our fault, or that there's an easier way to avoid the problem if we can just figure what price we have to pay. That is a plea to the sensibility of exhaustion and history has shown that's a very damaging and very destructive impulse."

Cheney Asserts Iraq - Al Qaeda Link

Taken from The BBC, 06.04.2007

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has repeated his assertion that the al-Qaeda network had links with Iraq before the US-led invasion of 2003.

Mr Cheney told a US radio show: "They were present before we invaded Iraq."

Hours earlier, a declassified Pentagon report said information obtained from Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein had confirmed they had no strong ties.

Its publication followed pressure from Democrats who suggest intelligence was twisted in the run-up to the war.

The belief that Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda were working together was an important element in the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq.

Critics have since suggested the administration "cherry-picked" from available intelligence to bolster that case.

'Inappropriate' intelligence
Mr Cheney, in an interview with conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, insisted there had been a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaeda terror group.

He said former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been leading the network's operations in the country before the 2003 US-led invasion.

"He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organised the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," he told the show.

The newly declassified Pentagon report was based on interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two of his aides, as well as documents seized in Iraq.

The Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, had pushed for its full release after it was released in summary form in February.

In a statement on Thursday, he said the document showed why a defence department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon pre-war intelligence work had been "inappropriate".

The report into former Pentagon policy chief Douglas Feith's handling of intelligence on Iraq was prepared by the defence department's top watchdog, Inspector General Thomas Gimble.

Under repeated questioning by Mr Levin in February, Mr Gimble said the conclusions reached in reports by Mr Feith were not fully supported by the available intelligence.

In particular, his conclusion there was a "mature and symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda could not be justified on the basis of the available intelligence.

In addition, an alleged meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and a leader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, never took place.

Mr Feith's supporters stress that the inspector general found no evidence of illegal or unauthorised activity.